


Time and Space

by downtownfishies



Series: Ghost Stories [3]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Episode: 2013 Xmas The Time of the Doctor, F/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Linear Narrative, Regeneration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:15:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24572128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/downtownfishies/pseuds/downtownfishies
Summary: She holds on, the universe falling away behind her, and she understands that he did this.  He left her behind.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald, Eleventh Doctor/Clara Oswin Oswald, The Doctor & Clara Oswin Oswald
Series: Ghost Stories [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1763293
Kudos: 12





	Time and Space

**now**

He sees her, all eyes, staring and demanding and he cannot remember why she is important.

**40 minutes ago**

“No, don’t you dare!”

_I don’t know where I am._

Clara grasps at the side of the box, or at least she puts her hand there and then it doesn’t let go. The key is in the lock but the lock doesn’t turn.

_Time is relative, isn’t it?_

She is everywhere and nowhere, frozen and burning, always and never, and she can hear a thousand lifetimes calling to her.

_Show me the stars._

She holds on, the universe falling away behind her, and she understands that he did this. He left her behind. Has left her, will leave her, is leaving again and again and again and

_When she needs me, I’ll be there._

**11 minutes ago**

His eyes, and the rest of him, are old. Wearing thin, more than a little bit, and he leaves his room less and less, sitting in a chair by the light of the universe like a grandfather at the fireside while other people’s grandchildren fight and die for his sake. He forgets, he forgets, he forgets. The crack in the wall whispers to him and sometimes it screams and he remembers the most important parts, and he remembers what he is not supposed to say.

Who?

Who?

Clara.

A ghost from another life, she places a Christmas cracker in his hands and through the fog of his years he sees tears on her face. No, he imagines them. No, he remembers them.

He suspects that it may not be time that asserts itself in these situations, but people. Saving someone only to lose them, loving someone to your own end. He could leave, he could always leave, but he could not let the planet burn. He could not abandon his own ending, Clara’s beginning.

He steps toward her, places his hand against her cheek. Bridging the centuries that separate them now, he looks at her properly. It’s not a bad face, not one he’d choose even if he had ever gotten the hang of choosing, but if you get past the whole nose situation there are her eyes, seeing more than he can guess, understanding more than even she realizes.

This time he doesn’t choose for her, but he asks, _Please, let me protect you just a little longer._

**19 minutes ago**

“Doctor?”

_Are you going back to your cloud?_

She remembers being told that the Doctor lies, but he’s not supposed to do it like this. He’s not supposed to lie to her.

_You can’t do this to me!_

Now she’s left looking the fool, standing in a field holding a turkey in the cold afternoon sun, with Dad and Gran and Linda waiting inside to have opinions on her life, and she’ll have to face them alone.

_Hold onto each other._

And what is he facing alone? Does he deserve her caring what happens to him? But she still does. She can still hear the universe whispering to her, or maybe it’s just

_Binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary binary_

**368 years ago**

He never forgets a face but he’s not so good with names, and in his defense he never even met the girl called Oz until she lay crumpled on the ground in front of him, delicate human bones and organs all smashed up inside and she’s laboring to breathe, looking up at him with a face so unmistakably Clara’s.

“Oz, was it?” he asks her. “Is that short for something?”

“Oswin,” she mumbles. Her braids are coming undone and her hat has fallen off. It hadn’t occurred to him that he might meet one of them again, the echoes, now that he knows how they came to be.

“Oswin,” he says, one trillion times more composed than he feels inside, “Oswin, it’s going to be alright.”

“I know,” she says, and manages a smile. Clara’s smile. He never hoped to see it again. “Just run, you clever boy. Run, and remember.”

“Remember,” he breathes along with her, and then she stops.

The war goes on and children die every day and oh, she has never felt so young to him as right now. But he makes time for her, to ask did she have any family—no, they all died years ago—and to be shown her living space by a friend of the late Oz, a young woman with defiant and red-rimmed eyes.

The apartment is another family's cellar, and it reminds him both of her old attic at the Maitlands’ house and of his own quarters under the clock tower, walls papered with children’s drawings and tables overflowing with books and notes and snacks and sketches and schemes. He traces her method through the chaos and pieces together several risky but brilliant plans to incapacitate various enemy ships with minimal loss of life on all sides.

A last Christmas gift from his Clara. He never wanted her to have a grave on this world.

_Forgive me, you clever girl. I won’t forget. Not this time._

**11 minutes ago**

“Do something.”

_Anything could happen to you._

She kneels beside the wall and shuts her eyes against the glow of infinity. She asks for his life. No, she begs. No, she demands.

_One more paradox._

The only time she has been (in this life) to Gallifrey, it was mostly on fire, but she can picture the world on the other side of the crack, from the tallest spires to the deepest catacombs. It’s someone else’s memory, or maybe the opposite of a memory.

_Is my body out there, somewhere, in the ground?_

A beautiful world, fragile and brilliant and cruel, lost to time. It wants to come back. It lived and it died and it wants to come back, and why wouldn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to carry on forever? It demands, it begs, it whispers

_Clara who?_

**742 years ago**

It doesn’t take long for him to get used to the truth field, which is good, because he prefers not to stop talking. It’s easy, really, now that he knows what it is, to develop a workaround. Keep things simple. Ask questions, don't make statements. Talk to the metal head, not the human one. Keep moving, don’t stop to think, lest the field catch you pondering and let the thoughts come tumbling out of your mouth.

Solve the puzzle—the solution is war. Prevent the war—not likely. Who? Who? Who?

Clara.

He doesn’t watch her go. This makes it easier.

No, no it doesn’t. The truth field doesn’t stop him from lying to himself. He can hear the engines whine and wonders what the TARDIS thinks, but if she really disapproved she probably wouldn’t have taken off.

_This was only page one. I won’t let your story end here._

**now**

He has changed, and she will never speak to him again.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me about doctor who on [tumblr](https://miraclerizuin.tumblr.com/)


End file.
